Court halts 'wrong church, wrong pew' voting

Husted hails ruling, says no more election suits pending

A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily halted an attempt by voter advocates to expand the conditions under which provisional ballots are counted in the swing state of Ohio.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati put on hold a lower court's ruling that said the state must count provisional ballots cast not just in the wrong precinct but in the wrong polling location altogether.

With less than a week before Election Day, the appeals court ruling brought some clarity to one of the remaining disputes involving Ohio's election procedures. Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted's broader appeal on the matter remains before the appeals court, but it isn't expected to be decided before the election Tuesday.

Husted said Wednesday that the court's move allows him to provide Ohio's 88 county elections boards with guidance for processing provisional ballots, which are counted later and can be challenged. Allowing the lower court ruling to continue, he said, had the potential to cause problems and confusion.

"Voters could have cast ballots wherever they wanted to in the county, regardless of their eligible precinct," Husted said in a statement.

The ballots at issue are dubbed "wrong church, wrong pew," referring to both a mistaken polling place and a mistaken precinct.

A lawyer for a union that sued over the issue said as many as 8,000 voters cast such ballots in 2008.

Some polling places contain voting machines for several precincts. Voters in the right building, but in the wrong precinct, are labeled "right church, wrong pew." Ohio has been ordered to count those under a previous court decision.

However, the state had opposed counting ballots at wrong polling locations, saying it could create Election Day chaos among other problems.

The three-judge appeals panel agreed. It wrote in its opinion that the lower court's ruling would result in "interference with orderly election administration and greater confusion among poll workers and voters."

The appeals court decision delays an Oct. 24 ruling by Columbus federal Judge Algenon Marbley, who said he based his order on the rationale that such problems arise because of mistakes by poll workers.

But the appeals court questioned whether such ballots at the wrong polling locations should be counted.

"Though voters must rely heavily on poll workers to direct them to the proper precinct in a multi-precinct voting place, they are not as dependent on poll workers to identify their correct polling place," the appeals court concluded.

The decision was an elections victory for Husted, a Republican. It followed an Oct. 16 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in which it refused a request by Husted and Ohio's attorney general to get involved in a dispute over early voting.

"With the conclusion of this case, I am pleased that there are no more pending lawsuits that will affect the election," Husted said.

The move by the high court cleared the way for Ohio voters to cast such ballots, giving Democrats and President Barack Obama's campaign a victory three weeks before the election.

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